Annual Fall Fishing Trip

Last week two of my buddies and I went down to Holden Beach for a little fishing trip. We go every year, sometimes there are 2 of us, sometimes 8.


Traveled down Monday morning, got the V ready and fixed the shingles on my parents place that were torn off by one of the storms.

Went out Tuesday morning about 20 miles but it was rough and one of the guys got sick immediatly so we brought him back and went shrimping with my uncle. Got a 5 gallon bucket full of decent shrimp out of the ICW.

Wednesday we ran out about 4 miles and caught a mess of sea trout, then came back and shrimped again, got one 5 gal bucket full and another half full. Ended up with about 60 pounds of shrimp before heading, probably 40 pounds headed.

All in all it was a great trip, the temperature was in the 80's every day and the wind eased up on us.

Here are the trout we brought back, the smallest ones are over 12 inches, didn't measure the big ones, but they were NICE ONES!!!!

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My Uncle retired this year and stays at the coast most of the time now, he has made friends with another retired guy whose son bought a little 16 ft Atlantic net boat 2 years ago, but has never used it.

My Uncle convinced the other guy to break out the net, about a 100 ft with "doors" and give it a try on Monday, but the old guys had a time pulling the net and doors back in the boat.

So when me and my "young" friends showed, we got recruited.

It was a blast and took me back 25-30 years when I was a kid and spent many days pulling nets with my Dad and Uncle.
 
Good Deal RB, what kinda license did ya have ta pull that net? My neighbor told me him and his dad used to pull a small net in the sound around Nags Head with great results. Iv thought about getting me one!
:beer:
 
Hey Felton most people around here pull a net on the east side of manteo, I used to do it but haven't in years but it is a lot of work but is fun as hell.

Weve had shrimp all the way up here in the Pasqotank river.
 
Sounds good Lee, Id like ta try it one time. Good shrimp are hard to beat! I went to my shift foremans house yesterday and we steamed up 6 bushels of oysters and 20 lbs. of shrimp. They were really good!
 
for those of ya'll that never heard of it before, we "shimp bait" around here. First time I heard of it, i thought it was something akin to snipe hunting. I asked them, how small are the hooks ya'll use? But after seeing the results of one evenings work with a cast net, its suprising how much shirp you can catch over bait. My father had a small shrimp boat we used to run up behind Topsail Island, NC. We would drag all night long, catch a few pounds of shrimp, and kill hundereds of pounds of by catch. After one season of mixed results, my father saw no reason in continuing and sold the boat and gear. When I first moved to SC, I was supprised how much better the inshore fishing was as compared to NC; biggest reason, no inshore net dragging
 
You are right about the bycatch SP, we used to kill a lot of fish and get very few shrimp. This time we only pulled about 25 minutes each time and I'd say 90% of the fish were alive when we threw em back in (lots of baby flounder), along with the small crabs, (big ones got cooked) horseshoe crabs and the like. The squid got used to catch trout.
 
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